One of the many benefits of owning your own website is the ability to arbitrarily declare theme days. Today is Commonwealth Day, and there is nothing you can do to stop us.
Have you strong opinions on the Harare Declaration? Do you know how to pronounce “Maldives”? Does it rhyme with endive? How do you say endive? Heartened by The Gambia’s recent decision to withdraw from the Commonwealth and stick it to the Man? Can you explain how Newfoundland became a part of Canada to me, because I am American and a bit slow and it sounds like England just…sold it to them? That can’t be right. It was the 40s! Can it?
How many of the member states of the Commonwealth have you visited? If it’s just England, how long were you trapped in a farmhouse on the moors for and forced to write poetry? Did they let you take any of your poetry with you when they let you go? I have been to Canada at least once. I cannot remember if I have been there more than once. I feel as though I have, but i think it was just the one time (it was Vancouver, the summer they were filming the X-Men, to paraphrase Plath. I had steel-cut oatmeal for the first time and I was very impressed with Canada as a whole, I recall).
Anyhow, we have a very lovely day in store for you, full of Canadian humor and Australian childhoods and complicated Scottish political sagas. Come on in, make yourself a cup of something, sit down, and let’s have a nice long chat.
Full disclosure: I am at the (American) home of (noted Canadian) Nicole Cliffe, and will be here for an entire and glorious two weeks. I’m very happy here. She bought a deep fryer. Perhaps we will make poutine.
Tags: arbitrary declarations, commonwealth day, i love anne too but there are other fictional canadians, let’s keep the anne of green gables chatter to a minimum
Yaayyyyyyy! For homesick Aussies such as myself, may I recommend:
a lovely timelapse video of Sydney: http://vimeo.com/73878798
and Christine Anu’s version of My Island Home http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSFGK9HlEto
both of which have been known to make me weep. Miss my saltwater people!
Poutine! You know, it’s not a thing that I LOVED when I had only ever lived in Canada, but man do I miss it now. The Germans do potato pancakes well enough, but sometimes I really just want fresh-cut fries poutine. Or, you know, just the squeaky cheese curds? That’d help with the homesickness?
Canadian Taco Bell’s Fries Supreme! Only a country that fully embraces poutine could figure out how to improve on nachos: replace the tortilla chips with french fries!
Wait, does America not have Fries Supreme?? It’s the only thing I get from Taco Bell!
Nope! They have “nacho supreme” and it is gross.
Isn’t that just chili cheese fries? Because we have chili cheese fries – and nacho cheese fries – everywhere in my part of the world. (This is a good thing.)
But not at Taco Bell!
Ah, I see the problem! I live in Texas, and therefore I never have to go to Taco Bell. (That’s not a problem. For me. It’s a good reason not to move, despite, well, some other things about this state.)
There is only one Taco Bell with in about five hours of where I live, so it is such a treat!
Where in Texas are you? Is it Austin? I am going there in a month and need a bunch of great things to do!
Not Austin, no – just boring old Houston.
Never fear, though, Austin will throw itself at you, great things to do-wise. If you have transport, believe all the locals who tell you it’s worth the trek out to The Salt Lick for BBQ, even though there are so many other good places you can walk to .
What (non-eating) things do you like? (Eating is easy: go to Kerby Lane, go to The Salt Lick, go to the taco trucks, be the happiest person ever.) Bats, live music, the Alamo Drafthouse, a crack in the middle of the marble floor of the capital building where a painter fell from his scaffold while painting the rotunda, which, nice, now I just flashed back to hauling ass out of the building when I was 14 and hearing that story for the first time. The bush near the capital building where I hurled. Austin has it all!
We really like shopping – we’re having a lady trip. Walking and parks. Drinks.
Taco Bell has cheesy fiesta potatoes, which aren’t quite the same and are shamefully small. Our local Taco Bell is also a KFC so I prefer the KFC home fries made like cheesy fiesta potatoes. I don’t have this very often. I usually just make poutine at home.
Ooh! Ooh! I know the Newfoundland one!
Basically even though Newfoundland is, like, right next to Canada, almost all the population is on the island bit rather than the mainland bit, and before airplanes they were really quite isolated, and so they never merged up with the rest of the British North American colonies into Canada in the 1860s-70s like everyone else did. Originally they were going to become a separate “Dominion”, which was the old timey term for countries like Canada or Australia are now (i.e. they are independent but have the British monarch as their head of state, for friendship/cultural reasons). It was essentially self-governing, but before they could get the final approval to become fully independent, the country went bankrupt during the Depression, and there was a huge riot in the capital in 1932, at which point the elected government basically asked the British to take the place back over.
The intention was always to get the country back on its feet again, but the Depression was followed swiftly by World War II (during which Newfoundland was strategically located) so the Brits held on for a while. After the war, they had a referendum to see if people wanted to be independent or to become part of Canada, and they voted for Canada, although the vote was pretty close!
I will hijack this excellent answer only to say that there is a really really really really good novel about this that will answer your question in greater, if slightly fictitious detail (plus lady newspapermen, who are the best newspapermen): http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-colony-of…
My only opinion is F*** the Commonwealth, I come from a member country but still have to buy a visa to visit Britain.
I have a strange and deep love for some Picnicface skits. (Mostly Powerthirst 2, Real Talk!, All About Halifax, and NFL Crunchtime.) I have not seen a skit made in the past two years. The All About Halifax skit, as well as a conversation I had with a young woman from Halifax, represent all I know about the city.
I’ve also visited Toronto and Montreal a few times, and both cities are pretty nice and filled with delicious food, which represents 75% of what I care about when traveling. Toronto’s ethnic diversity was practically startling to me, and I loved it! So awesome. I would definitely be open to living there, if it wasn’t for the pesky job thing.
Husband and I desperately want to travel to NZ, and even thought about doing a year there until we realized that spending a year there might be less of us trying to have new adventures and more of us trying to run away from some of our problems only to experience them in a foreign country. BUT! We still want to go to NZ in the near future. Just not for an entire year.
Other than that.. well, I’ve played sports that are popular in the Commonwealth? (Rugby union, gaelic football, and one-half of a footy game.) I was terrible at all three of them, and refused to try camogie out of the suspicion that if I’m terrible with holding a ball, I’d be even worse at holding something else to try to hold on to a ball.
Yes! Picnicface!!! The All About Halifax skit pretty much sums up the place, just FYI. It’s great.
My grade 8 teacher told us Newfoundland joined Canada because of the Eaton’s catalogue. The lesson was more nuanced, but that was what I took away from it at age 12.
R.I.P. Eaton’s. :'(
I go with: Mol-deev.
No idea about endive as have only ever seen it written down.
I have always said it “on-dive” but I have heard also “end-dive.” Officials from the the california endive company recommend the french pronunciation: “on-deev,” but I feel like that sounds unnecessarily snooty.
My only Commonwealth-related tidbit: Newfoundland is on a half hour time zone, meaning that it is an hour and a half ahead of Eastern Standard Time, and three and a half hours ahead of Mountain Time. This is relevant, because you can now celebrate “Newfie New Year” at the child-friendly hour of 8:30 PM if you are living in the intermountain west. (Presence of a good sized community of homesick Canadian academics optional; McVitties milk chocolate HobNobs required.)
That is the cutest thing that I have ever heard.
“…and XX:30 in Newfoundland” can be added on to the end of any declaration of time, for instant Canada jokes!
Canadians who watch national Canadian news are very familiar with this. “The Amazing Race: 7:00, 7:30 in Newfoundland.”
It’s a Canada joke and a CBC joke, what more could you ask for?
Countries can withdraw from the commonwealth all they want THEY’LL COME CRAWLING BACk.
It’s not like anyone’s done any better without our constant, benign neglect, is it? IS IT?
/brit
#DEATHTOTHEMONARCHY
So this isn’t a day about Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pensylvania and Virginia?
Could you imagine if they formed a Commonwealth of Commonwealths?
Okay, now that I think about it, I may not actually OWN this website.
I kind of have some strong anti-imperialist feelings about this …
Don’t worry, they can be fixed with a visit to the British ‘Weren’t the Empire Days Grand!’ centre, where you will be force-fed tea while Daily Mail articles are downloaded into your brain.
All fixed. All better.
My in-laws have a lake house in Ontario and it is Paradise on Earth, so I am all about the Great White North. And now I have the MacKenzie brothers theme song in my head, sung (of course) by Geddy Lee.
Also I now kind of want some poutine.
MALLORY. It is time for you to read this book.
WILL DO. Hi, Kate!!
I was very very disappointed to find out that Sheilagh was not a real person, as she might be one of my favourite literary characters.
I’m not sure how this lines up with Commonwealth Day but it seems somewhat apropos: some friends insisted that the husband and I watch Trailer Park Boys on Netflix over the weekend and it just reminded me of how much I love Canada.
Smokes, let’s go.
You don’t even smoke, Bubbles!
I went to a cricket match in Melbourne one time. It was the day after xmas and we sat in the stands all day as the sun wheeled overhead and drank beer and ate xmas dinner leftovers. All I remember about the game is if you’re at bat the umpire will hold your hat and sweater vest for you.
can we talk about how australians can get infinitely renewable 2 year work VISAs? Seriously folks, Whistler is overrun with aussies, and all they have to do when the 2 years is up (apparently) is like drive down to seattle for a bit then re-enter. WTF AUSTRALIA HOW ARE YOU SO COOOOL.
so how am I doing on the meet cute australians factor? well one of my roomies is cute and australian, and he has a friend who is cute and australian. So, working on it.
So I lived in the UK for a couple of years, imported my Irish husband from there – this was 20 years ago, the early 90s.
ANYWAY, my half-Irish son turned 18 on Saturday, and his “I’m legal to do stuff now” day was scuppered by the government shutdown’s refusal to accept his selective service registration so ANYWAY ANYWAY he decided to go donate blood instead (and torture me with instagrams of needles in his arm) and asked if we wanted to join him.
And we couldn’t.
Because Mad Cow Disease.
Me too! I’ve lived in Ireland and the UK, and I am a no-no on donating blood. Though you’d think I’d already have symptoms of mad cow at this point, if I was going to get it?
Same here! I lived in Scotland in the 80s and am thus banned from giving blood. Because clearly Britain is having so much trouble with the letting people donate blood thing.
I have been to Canada at least once. I cannot remember if I have been there more than once. I feel as though I have, but i think it was just the one time
This is utterly true about me & Canada. Except it was Toronto.
I was in Hong Kong for a couple of weeks in 1996, which was very ‘on the brink of change’ about itself. “Look, over there is China! But in a year, over here will be China, too!”
Otherwise, there were the English years (very poetic short stories, probably due to being trapped on the broads instead of on the moors), and more trips to Ireland than I can shake a stick at. (I would not shake a stick at Ireland. It might hit my mother-in-law, and that would be rude.)
Wait, does this mean we can all listen to Stan Rogers and Dougie MacLean all day? Because in that case, I’m in.
Also, I went to/worked at a camp in NH, where a lot of staff and campers were from Canada. So every 4th of July, we’d all sing the Star Spangled Banner, and they’d (affectionately) try to drown us out with O Canada.
And then we’d have a big camp-wide game of British vs. American capture the flag, and that’s not really relevant, but all this commonwealth talk made me think of it.
I’m really hoping this can turn into “Due South” fic day.
OMG. One of my very favorite fictional Canadians. What did real Canadians think of that show?
Is is/was very popular up here. I’m not sure how much people actually WATCHED it, but everyone knows about it.
Will someone talk about Canadian bands with me? Canada, how are you so good at making music I like?
The Singapore Declaration was better.
Drake is a Canadian citizen and so is Ted Cruz. Do they cancel each other out?
Taco Bell has cheesy fiesta potatoes, which aren't quite the same and are shamefully small. Our local Taco Bell is also a KFC so I prefer the KFC home fries made like cheesy fiesta potatoes. I don't have this very often. I usually just make poutine at home.